


Power Surge

by wastefulreverie



Series: PhannieMay Shots 2018 [8]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Electrocution, Gen, Ghost Portal, Identity Reveal, Suspense, fenton portal, portal accident, secret reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 22:12:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17232161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastefulreverie/pseuds/wastefulreverie
Summary: When Dad's new invention meets the Fenton Portal, the entire Fenton family is granted a frontrow seat to the day the portal turned on.





	Power Surge

 

With all the damage from ghost attacks, it wasn't uncommon for there to be regular electrical grid maintenance. And with maintenance, naturally came a few irritating blackouts, while power surges were a little more rare. Sure, they happened every once in a while, but not on a very large scale, and they usually occurred during the middle of the day when nobody was home.

Today, however was different.

Jack and Maddie Fenton had dragged both of their children down into the lab to demonstrate their latest invention. Neither Jazz or Danny were very interested (all they cared about was whether or not it could harm Danny, so they immediately lost concern), so the both of them found something else to occupy their attention while their father rambled on about the practicality of the new Fenton Speculum, which was a device that revealed how a ghost had died. It was relatively harmless, however, the Fenton parents were hoping to use it on Danny Phantom to prove to the townsfolk that he is a deceitful evil, menace.

It was definitely an invention for Danny to avoid, but aside from that, they didn't really need to know that much about it.

Jazz was currently trying to focus on her newest psychology book, and Danny was staring at the wall, clearly zoning out and thinking about something other than her parents' desire to prove his alter ego was evil.

Honestly, how had their lives become this complicated?

“-and that's how _that_ button works!” Jack finished, proudly holding out the L-shaped device for his children to see.

“Great,” Danny said dryly, “can we go upstairs now? I need to be working on homework so I don't fail all my classes.”

Maddie frowned, “But we still haven't showed you how it works. Yes, your education's important, but you have the rest of the night to do homework. It's only six o'clock! You have plenty of time.”

Danny sighed in resignation and allowed his parents to keep rambling.

“Alright, so this mechanism here,” Jack turned the device over in his hand, “should trigger this circuit which should allow the device to sense the presence of a ghost's ectosignature! Like this,” he pressed a button on the device, which immediately lit up in a blue light.

_'Ectosignature detected! Two feet away! Cross reference in database?'_

“Ghost!” Jack cried. “Two feet from me!”

“Jack,” Maddie groaned, “there's no ghost. It's just malfunctioning again. Remember, it just tends to do that around Danny ever since that accident with the portal.”

“Oh,” Jack said, dejectedly, “that's right. Wait, do you think that the portal could be the cause of it? Could it still be somehow affecting you, Danno?”

“Uh, nope!” Danny said nervously. “I was just standing near the portal when it turned on, remember? Got a tiny shock, passed out for thirty seconds, and I'm fine! Totally  _completely_ , fine!”

“It's just a fluke, Jack,” Maddie reasoned. “We'd know if there was something wrong with our boy.”

“I guess you're right,” Jack admitted. “After all, no one's got a tougher skin than a Fenton! That portal couldn't hurt you if it tried!”

Danny hesitantly laughed, “Hehe, you bet!”

Jazz elbowed Danny, and muttered out of their parents' earshot, “You're being too obvious. Tone it down.”

“Shut up,” he hissed in reply.

“Now...” Jack said, “Where were we? Oh, right! I was demonstrating the Fenton Speculum...”

At those words, all the lights in the lab instantaneously crackled before glowing twice as bright, and an audible buzzing noise surrounded the occupants of the high-tech basement. Jazz jumped and fell back into Danny, causing the siblings to stumble back into the counter behind them. Jack still held the Fenton Speculum in his hand, holding it outright, while Maddie stared up at the ceiling.

“What was  _that_ ?” Danny asked.

“It seems like some sort of power surge...” Maddie observed. “Probably the electrical maintenance outside.”

“W – what's wrong with the portal?” Jazz asked, panicked, being the only family member to notice the green sparks originating from the structure in the wall. The sparks pierced the air like half-formed lightning bolts, before fizzling out into nothing. Suddenly, one of the green bolts of energy jetted forward and directly consumed the Fenton Speculum, still in Jack's hand.

Jack dropped his prized invention immediately, allowing it to fall to the floor.

“The power surge must've been too much for the portal!” Jazz guessed. “Now who knows what it's doing?”

The four family members watched in horrifying awe as the device on the floor started to glow green itself and illuminate the lab with a beacon of ethereal light as the portal started to swirl more brightly and violently.

“That doesn't look good,” Danny commented.

“If energy from the portal hit the Fenton Speculum, that must mean the Speculum is recognizing the portal as an individual ectosignature, which means it's trying to show the portal's death!” Maddie hypothesized.

“But since the portal isn't a ghost, it doesn't have a death. So what the heck could it be doing?” Jack wondered.

Danny had a very,  _very_ vague idea, and he didn't like it.

“Mom, Dad, how does the Speculum actually show 'a death'?” Jazz asked, clearly thinking along the same line as Danny.

“Well, it creates a 3D holographic image and then projects it, sweetie,” Maddie explained. “You'd know if you were liste...”

The Fenton Speculum then started to vibrate, and all of a sudden, a grid of green lasers enveloped the space within the lab, pulsing in sync with the portal. And then, the portal went almost completely dark, appearing to be in the state it was in when it was first constructed. There was still a green net of light over the lab, creating a holographic landscape for the Speculum's projection.

Jack and Maddie gawked at the phenomenon with fascination.

“This isn't exactly what we intended the invention for... but this is becoming interesting,” Maddie whispered.

In the middle of the lab, three distinguishable bodies of light formed from the floor, creating grainy holograms of three different figures. At first, the holograms were devoid of much detail, though they were gradually becoming more defined, so it was clear who the three people in the projection were.

Danny and Jazz realized what it meant immediately, and looked at their parents with dread. There was no way to prevent them from witnessing what was bound to come next. They were screwed.

“Wait,” Jack said, “isn't that-”

“Danny?” Maddie questioned. “Sam? Tucker?”

After the holograms were fully formed, they began to move, as if reenacting a play. Danny's hologram was the first to move, and a warbled version of his voice echoed throughout the lab.

“Okay, I showed you the portal. Can we get outta here now? My parents could be back here any minute. Besides, they say it doesn't work anyway.”

“Is this...” Jack said slowly, “the accident? Why would the portal be showing us this?”

Maddie thought for a moment. “All a ghost's death is, is the moment that a ghost comes into existence. So by that logic, we didn't create the Fenton Speculum to show us a ghost's death, but rather, an ectoentity's formation. If you look at it a certain way, the portal is an ectoentity all by itself. So that means, that Danny's accident was the moment that the portal came into existence, which is why we're seeing this.”

“So basically,” Jack concluded, “The Fenton Speculum show's a ghost's formation rather than death, and this qualifies as the portal's 'formation'.”

“It makes sense,” Maddie said.

Sam's hologram walked across the lab and stood in front of the portal, gazing inside. When she spoke, her voice was also distorted. “Come on Danny, a Ghost Zone? Aren't you curious? You gotta check it out.”

Danny's hologram stood still for a moment, before looking up at Sam, appearing to have made up his mind about the portal, “You know what? You're right. Who knows what kind of awesome super cool things that exist on the other side of that portal.”

The lab was eerily quiet. “You didn't actually go _inside_ the portal, did you, Danno?” Jack asked.

“Don't be ridiculous, Jack,” Maddie said. “He knows better than to do that.”

Danny watched as Jazz looked like she was about to say something, and locked eyes with her, rendering her back to silence.

The family watched as the past version of Danny put on the white HAZMAT suit, and looked towards the vacant portal at the back of the lab. Sam's hologram stepped forward, “Hang on,” she tore the sticker of Jack's face off of the suit. “You can't be walking around with that on your chest.”

Jack frowned, “What's that supposed to mean?”

Without any further words, Danny ventured forward and walked inside the of the portal, eliciting two gasps from his parents. At the same time, Jazz tightly clenched Danny's hand, knowing exactly what was about to happen next. Both children prayed for something to stop the holographic scene, but it was too late.

The memory of Danny's rebirth as Phantom had began.

The Fentons were granted with a front seat viewing of exactly what happened inside the portal. They watched as Danny dragged his feet along the inside of the portal, and accidentally tripped over a cluster of wires. He fell against the wall, almost in slow motion, and then there was a loud: CLICK.

And then, everything happened at once.

Danny knew what was coming, after all, he'd been through it himself. Jazz knew a little, but not much to truly prepare her from the horror that was her brother's half-death. And for their parents... everything registered as an initial shock, disbelief clouding their perception of the scene in front of them.

But all aside, it hit everybody in the same place emotionally. It was devastatingly heart-crushing to have to witness/relive the pain that Danny experienced that day.

Hologram Danny froze in the portal, a green star-burst of light ripping directly through his chest. Bright white lights started flashing at an exponential rate, illuminating Danny's body as it was wracked with thousands of volts of electricity, tearing raw, anguished screams from his throat. His entire body arced with pain, his body erratically convulsing as his arms were frozen upwards. His tortured screaming resounded throughout the entire lab, allowing his misery to be heard in the fullest extent.

The long he was in the portal, his body started to change. His white HAZMAT suit slowly blackened, while his black boots and gloves turned white; his pale skin gradually tanned; his alarmed eyes shifted from a dull blue to a blazing green, that clearly resembled the ectoplasm in the portal; and his midnight black hair was sapped of all color, becoming a pure white. It took Jack and Maddie much longer than it should have to register that instead of their son, Danny Fenton, they were looking at the image of Danny Phantom – the evil ghost boy who often wreaked havoc on Amity Park. Or, so they had thought.

“D – Danny?” Maddie whispered, refraining from looking back at her actual son because she was far too captivated by his hologram.

Through it all, Jazz clung to her brother, far too shocked to think of anything to say, for her comfort or his.

As Phantom's emergence was complete, Danny's hologram fell unceremoniously out of the portal and Sam ran out to catch him, only for him to fall directly through her arms. Her voice resembled Maddie's moments earlier: “Danny?”

And that's where the holographic projection stopped. The bodies of light froze and within seconds, melted away, leaving nothing but the four Fentons.

Jack and Maddie blankly gaped at their son, completely appalled. He looked straight back at them, obviously ashamed and afraid, yet he wore a thin mask of prevalence.

When he realized that they were waiting for him to speak first, Danny rubbed the back of his neck and laughed nervously. “Well, uh... funny story. The portal _may_ have affected me some, after all....”

 

 


End file.
